Red Dead Redemption 2 · 1440p Favor Quality · 30 cards, identical settings · Updated July 2026

What GPU Do You Need for Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440p?

We benchmark Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440p Favor Quality with ray tracing off, frame generation off and upscaling off, logging the average, the 1% low, frametime, VRAM used, board power and temperature. 10 of the 82 cards below were measured first-party on our Ryzen 7 7800X3D test bench; the rest are anchored estimates placed against those runs, and every row is labelled so you always know which is which. 49 clear 60 FPS, 25 clear 100, 3 clear 144.

Highest frame rate

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090

215 FPS average, 166 FPS 1% low at 1440p Favor Quality, anchored estimate. 6.57GB of VRAM used, 535W board power, 70°C. $1,999 MSRP.

Pros

• 215 FPS average at 1440p Favor Quality
• 166 FPS 1% low, the number that decides smoothness
• Uses 6.57GB of VRAM here
• $1,999 MSRP

Cons

• 535W under load
• Figures are estimated, not measured

Best for: 1440p Favor Quality at high refresh.

Strong all-rounder

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

184 FPS average, 143 FPS 1% low at 1440p Favor Quality, anchored estimate. 6.57GB of VRAM used, 418W board power, 66°C. $1,599 MSRP.

Pros

• 184 FPS average at 1440p Favor Quality
• 143 FPS 1% low, the number that decides smoothness
• Uses 6.57GB of VRAM here
• $1,599 MSRP

Cons

• 418W under load
• Figures are estimated, not measured

Best for: 1440p Favor Quality at high refresh.

The value pick

GeForce RTX 5080

158 FPS average, 122 FPS 1% low at 1440p Favor Quality, anchored estimate. 6.57GB of VRAM used, 335W board power, 66°C. $999 MSRP.

Pros

• 158 FPS average at 1440p Favor Quality
• 122 FPS 1% low, the number that decides smoothness
• Uses 6.57GB of VRAM here
• $999 MSRP

Cons

• 335W under load
• Figures are estimated, not measured

Best for: 1440p Favor Quality at high refresh.

RDR2 on Favor Quality is the prettiest stress test in PC gaming and one of the most honest, it punishes weak cards without collapsing, so the whole ladder stays readable from top to bottom. RDR2 is GPU-bound and shader-heavy, with a long draw distance that keeps the card busy rather than the CPU. It scales almost linearly with raster performance, which makes it one of the better single indicators of where a card really sits.

One thing worth reading off the table rather than the chart: VRAM used. Red Dead Redemption 2 peaks at about 11.33GB here, which means an 8GB card has headroom in this title even though it will drown in a modern AI workload. VRAM panic is real and mostly misplaced: the games that genuinely need more than 8GB at 1440p are rarer than the discourse suggests, and the number in that column is measured under the same conditions as everything else on this page. The bigger point: buy for the 1% low, not the average. Every card above 60 in that table is playable. The ones worth your money are the ones whose second column doesn't collapse.

Our verdict

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 tops the chart at 215 FPS average and 166 1% low at 1440p Favor Quality. The more useful number is that 49 of 82 cards clear 60 FPS, and the cheapest that does is the Intel Arc B580 at $249. Red Dead Redemption 2 uses about 13.54GB of VRAM here, so capacity isn't what's limiting you. Shading power is. Buy on the 1% low column, not the average: that's the one you feel. 10 of these cards were measured on our bench; the rest are labelled estimates.

FAQ

What is the best GPU for Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440p?

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, at 199 FPS average and 154 FPS 1% low at 1440p Favor Quality in our testing. But 'best' and 'enough' are different questions: 21 of the 30 cards we tested clear 60 FPS and 11 clear 100. The cheapest card in our data that holds 60+ is the GeForce RTX 4060 at $299 MSRP.

How much VRAM does Red Dead Redemption 2 need at 1440p?

About 11.33GB in our runs at 1440p Favor Quality. That's measured usage under the same conditions as every other figure on this page. An 8GB card is not short of memory in this title. VRAM becomes the binding constraint in AI workloads and in a handful of modern titles at 4K; at 1440p in this game, shading power is what limits you, not capacity.

Why do you publish 1% lows?

Because it's the number you actually feel and almost nobody prints it. The average tells you how many frames arrived over a minute; the 1% low tells you how bad the worst of them were. A card averaging 120 FPS that drops to 45 in a fight is a worse experience than one sitting flat at 90, and a chart of averages will tell you the opposite. Every row in our table carries both, side by side. The worst offender here is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080: 101 average, 74 1% low.

What settings did you test Red Dead Redemption 2 at?

1440p, Favor Quality preset, ray tracing off, frame generation off, upscaling off, on an R7 7800X3D. Every card ran exactly that. The reason we're rigid about it is that mixing presets or turning DLSS on for some cards and not others is how GPU benchmarks quietly become meaningless, you end up comparing settings rather than hardware.

Will my CPU bottleneck Red Dead Redemption 2?

Possibly, and it shows in our own data. These figures are from an R7 7800X3D, where a chart compresses at the top, that's usually the CPU, not the cards converging. RDR2 is GPU-bound and shader-heavy, with a long draw distance that keeps the card busy rather than the CPU. It scales almost linearly with raster performance, which makes it one of the better single indicators of where a card really sits.

Are these numbers from your own testing?

Our gaming suite is anchored to first-party runs on 29 reference cards, with the rest of the fleet interpolated per game against that anchor ladder, a card we've run ourselves is never re-estimated. Every figure on this page comes from the same 9-game core suite at identical settings, which is what makes cards comparable to each other. It's also why we won't quote a number from another reviewer's methodology: it wouldn't be comparable to anything else here.

How we test

Every figure here is 1440p, on the preset named on the page, with ray tracing off, frame generation off and upscaling off, because a comparison is only meaningful if every card ran the identical workload. Test CPU is an R7 7800X3D. We publish the average frame rate, the 1% low, frametime, VRAM used, board power and peak temperature for every card in every game. The 1% low is the number that decides whether a game feels smooth; the average is the number everyone quotes. We show both, side by side, on purpose. Our gaming figures come from a 9-game core suite run at identical settings across the fleet, anchored to first-party runs on 29 reference cards and interpolated across the rest using a per-game anchor ladder. We do not re-estimate a card we have run ourselves. What we deliberately don't do: mix presets, mix resolutions, enable upscaling on some cards and not others, or quote a number from a different reviewer's methodology. Those are the four ways GPU benchmarks usually become incomparable. Frame rates depend on your CPU, your RAM, your drivers, your resolution and the specific scene being rendered. Treat these as a ranking of cards against each other under controlled conditions, not a promise about your machine.